We live in exciting—and dangerous—times. Within a week we saw a Trump-supported Brexit, a virtual act of political terrorism, where Britain recklessly voted to leave the European Market. The United Kingdom plunged in the stock market, losing million in one day. The world market lost three trillion dollars in two days. Millions of Americans lost $100 billion from their 401K retirement plans in three days.

We are on the eve of celebrating the birth of this country on July 4, 1776. I think this the right time to recall that we are a nation settled and forged by millions who fled religious persecution in Europe.

In addition to the New England colonies, the Middle colonies, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, were settled “as plantations of religion.” Even the colonies settled as commercial ventures were managed by men who called themselves “militant Protestants.”

We justly recoil in horror at the beheadings ISIS carries out in the name of Islam. The majority of Muslims do not recognize these barbarous acts as part of their faith.

History tells us humanity behaves alike. The religious persecution by Christian Europe rivals those carried out today by ISIS. Church authorities in Belgium executed David van der Leyen in 1554 for leading the Mennonites, by strangling, then burning, then finishing him off with a pitch fork.

The Protestant government of Scotland in 1615 hung, and then disemboweled, Jesuit John Ogilvie for the crime of being Catholic. It gets worse. After thousands of Huguenots (French Protestants) were “slaughtered by Catholic mobs,” 400,000 fled France for other lands, including America.

In 1641, Irish Catholics, after torturing 100 jailed Protestants, herded them to a bridge, made them strip, and forced them at sword point to jump into the water. Those who survived were shot. [All the above from Library of Congress reference: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html ]

By 1790, a Jewish Congregation presented President George Washington with a letter, referencing the religious persecution they had fled, and lauding the new nation’s commitment to religious freedom.

The winter of 1777-78 was the lowest point of the American Revolution. The nation’s capital, then at Philadelphia, had been captured by the British. Having suffered military defeats, Washington withdrew his 11,000 man army to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to winter-over and regroup.

He wrote to Congress that he had been informed his Army had but 25 barrels of flour, and not a single animal to slaughter. Over 2,000 men had died from disease, and exposure to the elements.

In another letter Washington noted that his Army’s “marches might be tracked by the blood from their feet.” That winter marked the turning point of the Revolution. Our forefathers stuck out that winter because they knew the persecutions of religious intolerance. They neither fled their posts, nor banned others arriving on our shores who were leaving the same persecutions. Valley Forge soldiers had faced death, and were willing to face it again, with courage, for the sake of religious freedom.

This election will be a profound turning point for the United States. We will either reaffirm our values of religious freedom and face the terrorists who would have us abandon it, or we cave to the dark ages before this nation was founded.

It’s a choice we must face in order for our nation and its ensuing value to last another 240 years. Happy Independence Day!

About the Author

Donna Brazile
Veteran Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile is an adjunct professor, author, syndicated columnist, television political commentator, Vice Chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the Democratic National Committee, and former interim National Chair of the Democratic National Committee as well as the former chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute.